A High Protein Diet Has No Harmful Effects: A One-Year Crossover Study in Resistance-Trained Males

protein

(Boston_guy) #1

(Ken) #2

35% of daily calories is hardly “high protein”. It’s only high when compared to the NAD, and is really just in line with the paleo/lipolytic macro.

Problems with protein becomes much more frequent when climbing above the 50% mark, especially in the absence of fat intake. In that case, protein based gluconeogenesis cannot keep up with the body’s caloric requirements, and often energy balance issues will arise, along with a strong laxative effect.


(Boston_guy) #3

Yeah, “high protein” is definitely in the eye of the beholder. Still nice to have an interventional study around protein.


(Richard Morris) #4

Yep. I presented this study at Low Carb Gold Coast as an example of the claim that a high protein has no harmful effects.

So when we use protein for energy we have to turn it into a carbohydrate by stripping off all the atoms that are not carbon hydrogen and oxygen.

That NH3 is an ammonia. It’s toxic. We also make other volatiles from protein metabolism which can be detected on the breath such as hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg gas), and methylamine (fishy smell).

Too much ammonia however will kill you, and we can’t get rid of it fast enough in the breath. So our bodies turn it into Urea that we can then pee out, but the rate that we can make and excrete Urea apparently saturates at more that 3.2g of dietary protein.

Bringing me to the “A High protein diet has no harmful effects” study. So firstly they did not measure circulating ammonia and blood urea nitrogen which is one of the first things you would want to look at to see if there was any potential for harm. Sounds almost like that was a question that no-one in that study wanted the answer to.

Secondly the HIGH protein arm was 2.51-3.32g/kg … interesting that they chose that high end number isn’t it, almost as if they didn’t want to risk any bad effects.

And then the study was not a 1 year cross over, it was 2 months high protein, 4 months normal, 2 months high, 4 months normal … almost as if they wanted to wash out any chance of ammonia buildup.

The Lead investigator Jose Antonio is CEO of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, an organization that is sponsored by the Whey producer Dymatize … who provided all the whey used in the study … and who now advertise that when using THEIR whey product a High protein diet has been shown to have NO HARMFUL EFFECTS.

And finally there have been at least 2 deaths in 2017 from ammonia poisoning related to high protein diet, one in Perth Australia and the other in Arizona in the USA. In the Perth case a young 25 yo mother doing a protein sparing modified fast for a body building competition lapsed into a coma and died. At her autopsy it was found that she had a rare (1:8000) genetic deficiency in UREA synthesis that was mild enough to remain unnoticed until her autopsy.

These are edge cases - most of us can go on diets up to 3g/kg LBM and process the nitrogen and sulphur compounds generated. But you never know who won’t be able to, which is why the mother of the Perth woman asked me to mention her during the presentation as a warning to low carb physicians if they put their patients on a high protein diet … to at least measure their circulating ammonia levels.


Newbie! trying not to tie myself in knots about getting keto perfect
(Boston_guy) #5

Wow, great post. Is there video of your talk?


(Richard Morris) #6

Yes it was filmed. up to the low carb down under folk when it will be public.